It’s official: D’Angelo Russell is “good” now. Before this year, he put up good stats, and he looked good on the court, but he wasn’t “good”. He is now. Officially. If you are wondering what makes my proclamation official more than the proclamation of some random loser on the Internet, it’s because I have a little rubber stamp that says “Good Player” on it, and I went into the DTB Highlights Archivium and stamped all the D’Angelo Russell VHS tapes containing his highlights with it. So there. Some of them still had the “Bust” label stamped on them, but the ink is kinda faded now so I just stamped over it.
It’s not just this game (which was sweet) that has elevated him to “good” status. He’s been good for most of the season. Good in that he’s helping his team more often than he’s hurting it. And I’m not talking about locker-room stuff. This is purely on-court actions we’re discussing right now. If he’s still messing up locker rooms like he was in LA, I don’t know about it.
However, his newfound goodness must be tempered by the fact that he didn’t score 40 tonight. He had a whole bunch of time, like 7 whole minutes, to get just two more points, and he didn’t do it. How many shots did he even take in that stretch? Two? Three? It wasn’t very many, and would you look at that, the Nets lost. In prior years I would’ve complained that he was doing too much and costing his team games, but now I’m complaining that he’s doing too little and costing his team games. Man, this guy just can’t win.